An alarm clock in Ginza

I recently spent a couple weeks in Japan, which is an amazing place for designers. There were thoughtful details everywhere I went. One example is the custom alarm clock in my Tokyo hotel (the Courtyard Marriott in Ginza).

This alarm is beautifully simple. There are only three buttons: decrement alarm time, increment alarm time, and on/off. The bottom row of buttons control the lighting of the room. (The white cable is from my iPhone charger, not part of the alarm).

I really like how the alarm time isn’t hidden behind a mode. The alarm time appears beside the current time in orange LED whenever the alarm is on. It doesn’t replace the current time, so you don’t have to track which mode is active. The two times look different from each other. The orange letters also give confirmation that the alarm is in fact set (which can be a concern when you rely on an unfamiliar device to wake you up).

When the increment/decrement buttons are held, the current time disappears to focus on the alarm time.

One of my favorite details is something you can’t see in these photos. The alarm is a solid brick of metal. It’s black and heavy, with no branding or seams visible anywhere. Solid, unobtrusive, and perfectly optimized—that’s a good design.

Let me guess: you never had to adjust the alarm by more than half an hour?

alex

on 02 Apr 10

No branding and solid construction seems to be a trend in Japan, just look at Muji. Perhaps designers are drawing on traditional values instead of contemporary consumer-oriented design?

Anonymous Coward

on 02 Apr 10

@37signals

Why doesn’t you blog list everyone who works for 37signals anymore?

RS

on 02 Apr 10

Let me guess: you never had to adjust the alarm by more than half an hour?

The increment/decrement buttons are perfectly fine for long adjustments when the acceleration is done well. I have a Bose Wave radio w/ alarm on top from the 90s that uses two arrows for setting time and the touch-and-hold acceleration makes it very fast and easy to do.

vic

on 02 Apr 10

Where can I buy one of these? I have a Sony that has many of the same properties (shows the time and alarm at the same time) but the light is so bright I have to cover it up to go to sleep.

Brian Willis

on 02 Apr 10

How do you deactivate the alarm when it goes off?

robert

on 03 Apr 10

I wonder why they didn’t take the opportunity to make the increment/decrement buttons change the time by five minutes. It would be a lot faster to set your time and I wonder how many people really need to get up at 7:23 rather than 7:25.

GeeIWonder

on 03 Apr 10

How can you possibly say there are only 3 buttons when quite clearly there are at least 7?

There’s something to be said about not bending, or outright breaking, the truth just to make a point.

About the alarm itself: very bright dials and LEDs are not terribly conducive to sleep, for me at least.

Besides, the best alarm is one that fits in your suitcase (M&S sells a nice one) and you know you will wake up to.

Berserk

on 03 Apr 10

robert: how many people really need to get up at 7:23 rather than 7:25

Mine is set to 5:42.. and it’s 23 minutes ahead. And then its snooze * 4 for 40 minutes..

Gee: How can you possibly say there are only 3 buttons when quite clearly there are at least 7? About the alarm itself: very bright dials and LEDs are not terribly conducive to sleep, for me at least.

Ryan: The bottom row of buttons control the lighting of the room.

++ on the second point.

qwerty

on 03 Apr 10

I can attest that hotel guests have lots of trouble with alarm clocks in general where I work. The best interface is an analog knob to set the alarm time plus a switch to enable the alarm in my experience. Hence, I see room for improvement.

GeeIWonder

on 03 Apr 10

@Berserk. Yeah, I see now. So the alarm is only 3 buttons and 2 displays on the brick that is actually an alarm clock combined with a lighting control combined with an Ipod charger combined with a paperweight, apparently.

Beautifully simple indeed.

Using the same logic, a Boeing 747 only has 2 buttons.

Adam

on 04 Apr 10

Beautiful design.

DavidCL

on 04 Apr 10

I don’t find this aesthetically attractive, but I do think it solves one big common problem with hotel alarms—you often have no indication (unless you think to press a button and check) that the person before you left it set to wake them up at 5:30 AM so they could catch their plane. This alarm solves that problem nicely.

What kind of sound does this alarm make to wake you up in the morning? That’s a very important question. (Another problem with hotel alarms is that if they are clock radios and I’m in a strange city, finding a station I want to hear in the morning can be difficult and time consuming. On the other hand, I almost never want to hear a standard blaring beep alarm. Interested to know how this device addresses this question).

A perfect example of the benefits of keeping it simple. Too often I have seen great apps wounded by adding features that only 1 or 2 percent of users will ever use but make the app more confusing for the other 98%.

That’s great not just for the hotel, but for home, too. All I need the alarm clock to do is to tell me when I’ve slept too long.

Thank you for getting back to what an “Alarm clock” is all about.

Abdu

on 05 Apr 10

There should be another button from brightness. When an alarm clock (portable one) is too bright for me, I turned it around to face the other way. This is is bolted so one has to drape a cloth over it or something.

Art

on 06 Apr 10

UI is too noisy if you ask me.

I don’t like that the bottom row of buttons, which have nothing to do with the actual alarm clock, look like they are part of it.